Remove Special Characters From Permalinks

Description

If you are using pretty permalinks, you may have noticed WordPress sanitizes it removing accents and some special characters.

However some of these characters are not sanitized by default, meaning they can be added to some of your post URLs, like a trademark symbol(?), a copyright symbol(?) or even a UTF-8 symbol like ?.

Although it may not hurt you at first, it may let users confused and it can cause some problems when interacting with some third party API that is not prepared to read such characters.

This plugin Removes special characters from permalinks when the post is created or updated.

How to use it?

All you have to do is saving/updating your post and you will notice special characters will be swiped out from the permalink.

Pro Version

Enjoying the free version of this plugin?

We have a Pro version that allows removing characters from all permalinks of your site with just one click, including posts, pages and custom post types.
We also offer support if you have some sort of problem.

Update to PRO for a better plugin and helping maintaining the development of this plugin

Installation

1. Upload the entire ‘remove-special-characters-from-permalinks’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.

FAQ

How can I contribute? Is there a github repository?

If you are interested in contributing – head over to the Remove Special Characters From Permalinks plugin GitHub Repository to find out how you can pitch in.

Reviews

Works great

Li-An December 22, 2020

In french, we use unbreakable space and it’s not managed by WordPress. So strange code shows up in permalink, breaking sharing on Facebook by example. This plugin fixes this problem. So 5 stars. Update: I downgrade the rating to 2 stars. There is a conflict with Markdwon Module in Jetpack and there was no update made. Too bad. Update?: after contact through Facebook page, the problem has been fixed. Hooray. So back to 5 stars.

Perfect

tiendungzone September 26, 2018 1 reply

The function is great to make url more friendly

Awesome plugin

Dao Tien Dung September 13, 2018 1 reply

I’m from Viet Nam, My project encountered a problem with permalink that had special characters or emoticons that I could not fix, websites that were available to many users. They do not know edit url manually, so this plugin is a relief for me Thanks so much!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

1.0.9 – 31/07/2024

• Tested up to: 6.6.

1.0.8 – 26/09/2023

• Tested up to: 6.3.
• Update plugin icon, banner.

1.0.7 – 19/06/2023

• Tested up to: 6.2.

1.0.6 – 09/03/2023

• Dev – Improve notice.
• Tested up to: 6.1.
• Move to WPFactory.

1.0.5 – 22/12/2020

• Fix markdown getting lost on post update.
• Tested up to: 5.6

1.0.4 – 10/10/2020

• Replace sanitize_title by ‘save_post’ hook.
• Improve special characters replacing function.
• Tested up to: 5.5

1.0.3 – 19/10/2018

• Check if permalink seems utf8 before removing characters
• Inform about pro version

1.0.2 – 22/09/2018

• Handle localization
• Fix domain path

1.0.1 – 22/09/2018

• Handle localization

1.0.0 – 12/09/2018

• Initial Release.